The Lovely Bones by Peter Jackson

I'm a person who loves going to the movies, sitting in those big red seats feels great! I hadn't seen a movie on a big screen in ages so this past weekend, I decided to go there and I picked Peter Jackson's latest movie: The Lovely Bones. The film came out in the US a few days ago and should be on the French screens around February.

Honestly, I still don't really know how I feel about it... I was both amazed and disappointed.

The movie is based on the best-selling novel by Alice Sebold telling the story of this young girl, Susie Salmon, that was raped and murdered on December 6^th 1973, when she was only 14 years old. After her death, she goes in this wonderful though horrific world she calls the “in-between”. From this world between Earth and Heaven she watches over her family and killer. She seems to be trapped in the “in-between” until she feels finally free to enter Heaven but for that, she has to weigh her desire for vengeance against her urge to see her family eventually heal.

I haven't read the book so I can't tell you if the adaptation is good or not. However, what I can say is that the reconstitution of the seventies looks amazing, it feels like you are really back then. Moreover, the cast is really good!

Mark Wahlberg is Jack Salmon, a dad sharing a special connection with his daughter and who is determined to find her killer.

The mother is played by Rachel Weisz. We can see that this woman is trying to cope with her daughter's death but it affects her relationship with the rest of the family.

Susan Sarandon is really good as an alcoholic grandmother who, oddly, ends up being the strength and consistency needed by the family at this painful moment.

The young Rose McIver is Lindsey Salmon, Susie's younger sister who is very curious and has suspicions. She believes her neighbor killed her sister, and she is right, but it is putting her in a very dangerous situation.

Stanley Tucci is unrecognizable as Mr. Harvey, the neighbor and killer. His behavior is obsessive and  we can tell by the way he builds perfect little dollhouses. When he catches Susie's eyes, she becomes her new obsession and he then creates a trap to kill her.

Finally, Saoirse Ronan, oscar-nominee for her interpretation of the role of Briony in Atonement in 2007 (French title: Reviens-moi), plays Susie, this little angel whose life was taken too early. She thought that life was beautiful and loved the visual aspect of it. She had just discovered her interest in photography and it is probably why her “in-between” is full of special effects trying to add suspense or just beauty to the story.

Unfortunately, I believe that Peter Jackson made a mistake by adding that many effects and that's what disappointed me. Some of them are fantastic, I have to admit, but others are very strange aesthetically speaking or even ugly. If the visual aspect was the only problem, I would not complain but, sadly, they are also useless. They don't help the spectator to understand the story or the characters better, they even disrupt the emotional bond we have built with them.

We all know what Peter Jackson is capable of, he showed that very well in his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and that is why I expected more from this movie.


Lucie Grisey

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, never heard of him ? What a pity...
Salvador Dali is certainly THE painter of the XXth century (personal opinion). But he's not only a painter, a sculptor and a designer. No. He's a genius. No more than that.
Okay, I admit, he's not an English-speaking painter, but since this article is written in English, we'll do as if nobody noticed it.
During his lifetime (and probably still today), Dali was hated by the art specialists and was seen as an eccentric, paranoid, self-centered and pretentious man. But this was only a role he played.
Born in Figueras in 1902, little Salvador showed his talent of artist at an early age (10 for being exact), and began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid.
His eccentric personality appeared at that time, and it was not quite unusual to see him attending his classes wearing a long black cape, a hat, and holding a walking stick in his hand. Besides, he was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. In fact, he considered that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him.
After his studies, he went through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphisical Painting, until 1929, the year on which he joined the Surrealist movement. He thus decided to explore "the world of the unconscious that is recalled during our dreams". Recurring images of burning giraffes ("The Burning Giraffe",1937), of ants, and melting watches ("The persistance of memory", 1931) became his surrealist trademarks.
However, his meeting with Gala, Paul Eluard's then-wife, was the most important event in his life: she not only became his wife, but his muse, his source of inspiration. From then on, Gala appeared in a lot (not to say in each and every) of his paintings, and was frequently associated with the blessed Virgin.
In the 19340s, Salvador Dali, fearing World War II, decided to flee from Europe and live in the U.S.A. There, Dali became famous and made a lot of money, which led him to be nicknamed "Avida Dollars" (greedy for dollars) by André Breton, who played with the letters of his name (SALVADOR DALI = AVIDA DOLLARS).
In 1948, he came back to Europe and developed a lively interest in science, religion and history, and he integrated these elements into his art. Ten years later, Dali began his series of large sized history paintings, the most famous one being The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.
Salvador finally died at the age of 85.
You may not like his paintings, his eccentricity, his behaviour, his declarations, but you cannot say this guy isn't a genius.

"I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous" Salvador Dali

Laura Waldvogel

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Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Did you know that the best-seller of Vladimir Nabokov almost never reached our bookshelves as the author himself wanted to burn his work ? Fortunately it has been saved by his beloved wife Vera, his muse – and driver. After many editors refused to publish Lolita, it has eventually been accepted by a French editor, Olympia Press, in 1955 and in the United States in 1958.

I purposely won't give too much information, not to spoil you the novel. I hope you'll forgive my short summary. Actually Lolita is not the story of a girl. More precisely it's not entirely the story of a girl named Lolita but rather that of a man, Humbert Humbert, obsessed with a girl, Dolores “Lolita” Haze. Humbert or “H.H” presents himself as the author of his own memoir. In this way, we readers will be given facts from his point of view, from his own perspective and subjectivity. And that's interesting! The particularity of Lolita is that, actually, Humbert is in his forties and that Lolita is hardly an adolescent. She is, as he coined it, a “nymphet.” You can easily imagine how shocking it was at the time... Basically, the educated European H.H goes to America and moves in at the Hazes' and meets Lolita there. From then on, H.H will develop an obsession for the seductive girl, to even marry the mother in order to get closer to the daughter. But Charlotte Haze will soon die in a car accident. H.H, as a cautious stepfather, takes the - easy - decision to take care of Lolita and together they will drive throughout the United States. That's the beginning of games of manipulation and sexual intercourse leading to a strange relationship between the two. Eventually the story will end with Lolita taking flight from H.H with the help of another man. In short.

To put it in a nutshell, H.H seems to corrupt a young and nice girl, or isn't it rather the opposite? What would you be capable of when blinded by love ?

Lolita is thus presented as the memoir of a man, Humbert Humbert who has written “the confession of a white widowed male”, which is actually the subtitle of the novel. The foreword written by John Ray, Jr directly invites the reader in the text by telling the practical facts : who, where, when, why and how they end up. Of course it is all mockery, John Ray does not exist, and neither does Humbert nor Lolita.

Highly controversial a novel, Lolita is nonetheless one of the greatest literary work of the twentieth century. Nabokov managed to manipulate the reader and even forced him to re-read his work so as to fully understand all the tricks he has put in it. Lolita is not simply a novel, it is not an easy novel either. Lolita is a story of love, of passion, of destruction. It compares Europe and America and introduces the doppelgänger theme (indeed, there are one or two examples of doubles in the novel). Lolita is also a detective story, including clues scattered throughout the plot. We readers are detectives who are eager to collect them and to solve the puzzle Nabokov displays in front of us. Moreover, Humbert Humbert is so persuasive and gifted that we are nearly bound to love this character that decency would suggest us to hate. His “fancy prose style” as he says seduces and even elates us hence the sense of manipulation that it conveys.

Seven years later, Stanley Kubrick completed to immortalize Lolita (and Lolita) with the release of an eponymous adaptation, quite close to the novel but not as crude as the novel. As a last proof of the book's success, “lolita” is now a word commonly used that, according to dictionary, defines “a sexually precocious young girl.”

Marie-Claire Klein

Sortie du Numéro 1 d'AnglophoniZ

Nous sommes heureux de pouvoir enfin vous annoncer que le 1er numéro d'AnglophoniZ est sorti !
Vous pouvez le trouver dans la plupart des bibliothèques de l'UDS (U2/U3, Portique, Bibliothèque des Langues, MISHA, histoire, Socio, . . .), aux restaurants Universitaires Gallia, Esplanade et Paul Appel, ainsi que dans certains locaux associatifs (Treffpunkt, ADEM, AIUS, cafèt AED/AES, ADS notament).

Mary and Max by Adam Elliot

Have you ever dreamt of having a foreign pen-pal ?

In the seventies, Mary Daisy Dinkle, an Australian 8-year-old girl with a birthmark the colour of poo, would like to have a real friend who isn't made out of seashells or chicken bones and also would like to know where babies do come from in America as she already knows that in Australia they come from beers as her grandpoppy Ralph told her. One day while shopping with her mother she finds a New York phone book. She picks a name, totally at random and decides she will write to this person. Mary starts her letter. Fortunately he will answer and tell her about his life : the friendship of Mary and Max begins.
Her fortune pen-pal is named Max Jerry Horowitz. He is an atheistic Jewish in his forties. Overweighed, he suffers from the Asperger Syndrome and has a goldfish named Henry VIII – of course, many Henrys will live with Max. Finally, he is affected with an addiction to chocolate hot-dogs (a recipe of his own). He wants a friend who isn't invisible as he sits in the corner of the apartment reading books.
Contrary to Max who is single and alone in a huge city, Mary is rather surrounded : she has an alcoholic kleptomaniac mother, a distant taxidermist father and an agoraphobic old legless neighbour in a wheel-chair.
Mary and Max's friendship will last for twenty years and won't be free from difficulties, especially on the part of Max, stressed and confused by each letter Mary sends him because it reminds him of periods or events he wishes to forget. Two significant parts of the movie will coincide with the committal of Max for 8 months and Mary's attempt to help him overcome his Asperger Syndrome thanks to a book, and this will turn to be a catastrophe for their relationship, introducing the themes of suicide and depression.

Mary as an adult is played by the Australian actress Toni “Muriel“ Colette (from PJ Hogan's Muriel's Wedding) and Max by Oscar-Winner Philip Seymour Hoffman (Truman Capote). To add to the Australian spirit of the film, Eric Bana (Troy, Hulk) plays Mary's husband, Damian.
Adam Elliot, the Australian Oscar-Winner for Best Short Animated Film, wrote and directed this animated film made with modeling clay with some astounding details. Mary and Max deals with various subjects such as friendship, suicide attempt, love, the Asperger Syndrome or the gap between NYC and Australia. Just a quick reminder concerning this syndrome : people affected show disorders such as significant difficulties in social interaction.
All in all Mary and Max depicts in an apparently light way some serious subjects. Indeed, I say apparently because you will not take your little girl or your nephew to see it ! It is full of grey, of brown and that is not likely to please children. No, this movie is aimed at an adult public which may even be disturbed by a few scenes, and yet it involves parts that are funny and sweet. Moreover, the clay seems to attenuate what is happening and thus adds another dimension to the movie. If it were not in clay, the story and the direction would be very dark and disturbing.

Now animation is more and more chosen to deal with serious subject matters as in $9,99, another Australian clay-movie whose subject is the meaning of life.


Marie-Claire Klein

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